Five Quick Wins for Multi-Site Energy Managers

Multi‑site portfolios don’t need months of analysis to start saving. The quickest gains come from applying a few high‑leverage changes consistently, then proving the impact and moving on to the next wave. Here are five wins you can deliver in the next 30 days without capex or disruption.

Tighten schedules

Audit start/stop times against real occupancy using access control data, PIR counts, or booking calendars. Shift pre‑start later with adaptive logic and pull stop time forward where zones can comfortably coast. Expect to cut 5–15% of HVAC runtime with no comfort loss, especially on weekends and after 6pm.

Configure alerts that pay for themselves

Too many alerts become noise. Configure a short set that always matters: out‑of‑hours consumption, base‑load creep, and anomalies ranked by financial impact. When an alert fires, include a recommended action and a likely cause so sites can fix issues on the first visit.

Share playbooks and lock in consistency

Document fixes as simple, step‑by‑step playbooks—“Trim schedules,” “Enable DCV,” “Check economiser.” Store them where everyone can find them and assign an owner for each site. Consistency across the estate is where small wins turn into large savings.

Verify savings with a simple M&V check

Pick a clean two‑week baseline, apply the change, and measure the next two weeks with weather normalisation. Report the delta with a short note on comfort and complaints. It doesn’t have to be perfect—clarity and cadence beat perfection.

Roll the pattern to the next sites

Once a win works at three representative locations, package it as a template and scale it. Track adoption and impact in a simple dashboard so leadership can see progress portfolio‑wide.

Momentum matters: When teams see evidence of savings within the month, engagement snowballs. That’s the moment to line up the next wave—setpoint tuning, fault fixes, and plant resets—on the same rinse‑and‑repeat model.